


tick tock.

by kuraku



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 19:49:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21379621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuraku/pseuds/kuraku
Summary: a man tells a tale of a gifted and talented doctor named zhang yixing, with magic, healing hands.one day, he falls in love with a handsome stranger, who has come to his village to help him.【 EXONCE UPON A TIME → #P55 】
Relationships: Kim Junmyeon | Suho/Zhang Yi Xing | Lay
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23
Collections: ExOnce Upon A Time: Round II





	tick tock.

Through the open windows, the trees seemed to whistle with the sound of the wind as though they were creating some kind of off-beat harmony, like a string of empty metal cans, clanging together in determination. He liked how it sounded that way: as though he could stretch an arm out from beyond the confines of his bed and touch the withered music, feel it soothe over his skin the same way the breeze did, cool and calm and unflinching. 

He wasn’t supposed to keep the window open at night, as the cold air could wreak havoc on the other patients around him, those trapped moaning in their beds, curled beneath blankets that were neither thin enough nor thick enough for any sort of comfort. The volunteer from earlier hadn’t closed the window latch properly—the wind had blow it out, knocked the glass open as though announcing its presence, demanding attention from the boy who still clung to consciousness in his bed, who stared purposefully out the open panes and wondered if he could see the moon, tonight.

“You should be asleep,” a voice said suddenly, so unexpected that the boy nearly jumped, though the lack of energy left in his body meant his shoulders merely flinched, grew tight and knocked back into the pillows in surprise. 

Round and fearful, he wondered if perhaps he would be in trouble—he could still walk, at least enough to leave the room and use the bathroom, so truthfully, he should have gotten up to try to close the latch and seal himself back into the room of stuffy sterile air and the distinct, wretched smell of disease. But he hadn’t, because he hadn’t wanted to. Something in him longed to be outside, to taste the air of the countryside and remember what it felt like to be among animals and crops, to taste sweet corn right from the cob, to listen to the soft sound of the sheep as they were sheared.

His eyes fell on a gentleman—he couldn’t be described as anything else, given his state of dress—who came through the narrow corridor of beds, ignoring the soft groaning of pain that seemed to echo around him, the tiny whimpering pleading of the sick around him. Rather, he seemed curiously intent on seeking out the boy who pulled his covers up now, stark to his shoulders, as though doing so might render him a more malleable patient, a good boy who followed rules and did as he was told. He never caused trouble for the nurses: never even cried when they stuck him with needles, or forced medicine down his throat that made his skin crawl. He never sobbed out loud when the pain made his body twist and curl into shapes that were not meant to be. He was a good boy. His mother had raised him to be.

“Tell me, child, why is it you are not asleep?” 

The man had a soothing voice, calm and collected, and given the little clipped tag on the pocket of his blazer, the boy assumed he must be another volunteer. Perhaps they had finally hired someone else to make rounds during the night, someone who wouldn’t swat at the patients complaining or scold him for being unable to sleep.

The man eased up to the side of his bed. Curiously, the boy’s gaze flickered from his calm, smiling face down to the oddly shaped object in his hands: it appeared to be a book of some kind, the pages gilded with a metal that made them stick together and shine, as though the entire book consisted of one thick, large page that took up the entirety of the space. 

“My chest hurts,” the boy admitted. Usually he wouldn’t say anything, but he felt an odd sense of trust in the man, who smoothed out the bed covers and took a seat primly on the edge of the rickety bed. The truth of it was that it was more than just his chest: his lungs ached, as though air could hardly seem to fill them before deflating back out again. His throat felt tight and raw.

“I see,” the man said solemnly. He didn’t scold him, or seem to have any disdain for the fact that he was awake—he simply took his book and set it on his thighs, his strong fingers curled over the top ridges of it.

“Would you like to hear a story, child?”

The boy’s eyes lit with an immediate fire, a desperate interest. Any escape from the pain was wonderful, but stories were his favorite: he loved to imagine a world far away from here, one of princesses and knights, and children who lived happily and healthily.

“If you don’t mind, sir,” he replied in a soft wheeze, as though remembering his manners.

The man smiled, faintly, and began.

Once upon a time, in a land not quite so different from the one that exists here, there was a determined, stubborn man who wanted to heal the sick.

His mother had passed away from an illness when he was very young, and so he felt cheated in a way, as though if he had only had the skills in his tiny little hands to save her, he could have done it. None of the doctors would listen to his suggestions, and none of them entertained the idea that a small, tiny little boy could have any sort of knowledge or power that they themselves did not possess. 

For any normal person, perhaps this would have been encouragement for them to give up, but not this boy—this boy, whose name was Yixing, meaning something along the lines of “happy talent”—knew that there was something different about him, something that the others in his village simply did not understand. So he took their criticisms with quiet obedience, and let the cruel, strange words fuel a passion in him that grew greater with every day of his tiny little life, until he grew big enough, and strong enough, to start his medical training.

As soon as he learned how to read, Yixing poured over the medical tomes of his times, scouring them for every bit of information like a hungry man might lick the inside of a canteen to find every last drop of water. Yet these books were filled with such difficult words that Yixing found he often had to have a dictionary nearby to look up the meaning of strange characters or words he did not completely understand, and sought the help of his grandparents as he persevered in his studies.

More and more, he discovered the inner workings of the human body. And as he grew, he devoured more information, and more, until the age came where he was allowed to begin an apprenticeship with the local doctor. Happy to simply have come to such a day, Yixing was beaming with pride when he stepped into the small, makeshift hospital, and began his work.

In truth, Yixing _did_ have something that others of his time did not: there was something special about this boy’s hands.

When he touched a person, he seemed to be able to alleviate their pain—not just with herbs or the soothing, practiced words of his fellowship, but with the press of his fingers or the gentle weight of his palm. There was some kind of strange, alluring heat beneath his skin that he did not understand. Perhaps it was a gift from the Gods, an apology for taking his mother from him at such a young age, but in any case, it was a power that only he appeared to possess, a power that drew awe and disbelief from those doctors working alongside him.

He was relieved from his apprenticeship at an early age, the earliest age that anyone in the village had ever been awarded.

Yixing’s grandparents clutched him and held him close, that day. “Your mother would be proud,” they told him. And he thought so, too.

When he opened his own hospital, he did not only aide the sick and the dying in his own village. No, word traveled quickly, from relief-stricken families there to the grief-riddled families of places nearby. Many would travel hours to come to the small village of Changsha, to see the gifted doctor and have his healing touch upon them. And many of the ill, so close to the brink of death, the edge of darkness and the unknown, would be brought back to the teetering line of life by Yixing’s gentle, careful hands.

Now, any story such as this has a villain—I am sure at this point, you are probably wondering when the Big Bad Wolf is going to come pouncing in to eat the doctor, or perhaps it will be the Devil, here to entice our hero into darker, more lucrative practices.

Yet, who is to say that Yixing himself is not the villain?

One day, a man walked into the small hospital in Changsha and asked to see the doctor. The nurse, having no recollection of seeing this man among the small homes in their village, assumed that he must be a visitor from another place. She admitted him into the back room, assuring him that the doctor would be in to see him soon. Impatient, the man waited until she had returned to her desk before wandering out of the examination room and past it, seeking out the sounds of pain and fear coming from another small room at the end of the hall.

He creaked the door open, softly. There, within, was the famous doctor himself—a handsome man, tall and lean, with full lips and dark, focused eyes that seemed to shroud beneath heavy lids. The man stood there for a moment, marveling, wondering, as he watched Yixing administer medicine into the patient’s arm. It was an old woman, tears streaming down her face from the pain, and the man knew that he needed to help, somehow, that what the doctor was doing simply would not be enough.

“Sir,” the man interrupted softly, and Yixing’s shoulders went tense. Jerking his head around, his lips parted in surprise. Surely no one was supposed to be back here with him, you see, and so it must have come as something of a shock to see anyone else there. 

He seemed to want to say those same words, but the man, he had come bearing a gift—and Yixing’s gaze fell to the open bag, slung around his waist, that contained a wild variety of herbs and medicines, things that Yixing had never seen in his life.

“I have come to see Doctor Zhang,” the man said, in a voice that was warm and thick, the kind of soupy quality of honey melting on a hot day. Surely it must have blanketed Yixing in that same sort of feeling, for he nodded, faintly, and pressed one of his palms to his chest.

“I’m the doctor,” he said, and there was almost a humility in that voice, as though he still could not declare it or believe it himself.

“I have brought you medicines, from over the mountains,” the man continued in earnest. The woman on the bed was moaning, faintly, and as he approached, she seemed startled by his presence, and reached to clutch at Yixing’s coat sleeve in fear.

The man smiled. “I am a learned man, and have traveled to many foreign places to acquire these medicines. I believe that I can show you how to use them, and even make them, if the ingredients can be acquired nearby.”

Yixing seemed torn between believing him, and asking him to leave. Still crying, the old woman began to shake her head. The man approached slowly, not wanting to startle her. He undid the strap of the bag and held it in both hands like a peace offering, the kind of thing that one might offer to someone who is out on their own, alone and in desperate need of help.

One of Yixing’s hands reached to touch at the bundles of herbs, running his thumb across them. The touch seemed to please him, for he nodded, swiftly.

“What is your name, kind sir?” Yixing asked of the man, and humbly, the man answered—

“You may call me Suho.”

Suho—meaning “guardian”.

For in the coming days, this man would serve as a guardian for the doctor, helping him to know which herbs to use for which afflictions, when to press his hands down and when to administer medication. The hospital had many volunteers, certainly, and many helpful friends to the sick of the village, but for Yixing, this man named Suho was perhaps the most helpful person he had ever found. He was life-changing.

Out in the woods together, Suho showed Yixing where to find particular herbs—ones that seemed to have sprung into growth overnight, for Yixing, in all of his gathering expeditions as a youth, had never seemed to see them. Suho showed Yixing how to grind them into a poultice, how to dilute them with water and teas for medicine, when to administer them and how. He stood by Yixing’s side as he helped to heal the sick and the wounded, never flinching at even the most severe of illnesses or injuries. Steadfast and sure, Suho was the confidence that Yixing needed when he had none, and the quiet support when exhaustion or uncertainty shook our stubborn, dutiful doctor.

Yixing trusted him, unflinchingly. For that was the kind of person he was—kind to a fault, understanding of even the worst of humanity.

Yet the more time that they spent together, the more that Yixing seemed to feel something different. Here was a man who smiled at him when he made silly mistakes, like spilling hot tea all over his paperwork or forgetting exactly where he had put his watch the night before. Here was a man who stayed with him until the late hours of the evening, when the stars would start to peek and pinch through the fabric of the night sky, and would explain to Yixing the meanings of the constellations. Here was a man who rarely laughed, yet when he did it was over the most ridiculous—and Yixing had come to love the sound of it, the silly and often stupid jokes that the man would make for him while they washed tools or dishes. Here was a man who seemed just as invested as he was, in healing and saving those in need, a man who had a kindness shadowing his dark brown eyes.

And perhaps every tale like this needs a love story, too, don’t you think? Something to keep those listening invested. I do not know much of love, but I think it must be like glue, enough to stick the pages together, yet messy and tiresome to use.

Our handsome doctor Yixing had, in fact, fallen in love with this strange man from the mountains, this Suho. 

And perhaps it was something of the magic inside of him, or perhaps it was something else entirely, but when they kissed for the first time, outside of the hospital in the cold winds of a blustery autumn day, Yixing could feel a painful heat that grew, from where their lips touched and more, further, from where Suho’s fingers grazed his jaw and slipped down to cup at his neck.

It felt like fire, cutting through bone and skin, searing words into his heart within that even he did not understand. 

They kissed often, after that—they kissed in the mornings, when they met at the hospital, and in the afternoons over lunch. Yixing would bring them both things to eat, food made from recipes his dear grandmother had left behind with him, and they would knock chopsticks and argue over the last pieces of meat, and Suho would relent because Yixing would puff his cheeks out and he seemed hardly impervious to such trickery.

When they shared their first night together, Yixing experienced a pleasure he had never known in his life. And Suho knew that something had begun to evolve between them, something more than just attraction or silly affections. They spent almost every night together after that. Yixing, living alone now, felt his home become more of a _home_ with Suho there. It felt warm, and right.

And perhaps it was this happiness that changed something in him, or maybe it was that the Gods had finally decided that he had been compensated enough for the difficulties of his youth, but Yixing’s body began to change.

It started small, at first, where his eyes would suddenly swim out of focus, and he would feel as though he were falling. His nurses told him it must be fainting spells from being overworked—and certainly, Yixing was never one to take a day off, so it was an understandable cause. He tried sitting more.

His hands would shake, sometimes, when knitting together stitches through broken skin, or washing the blood off of his palms. He could not seem to control it. 

As winter grew nearer, he developed a harrowing sort of cough. None of the nurses could seem to find a reason for it, other than the common cold, and Suho made him warm teas to drink in the mornings and at night. It did not seem to help.

When Yixing looked at himself in the mirror, it felt as though he were looking at someone else—someone weak and frail, someone whose body was failing them, one troubling piece at a time. If he were a doll, his joints would be broken and stiff, hair falling out, skin discoloring. And despite all of his expansive medical knowledge, he could not find the reason for it within himself, either. 

He wasn’t sure which was more terrifying: that he was falling to some unknown illness, or that he could not find the cure for it himself.

Days became excruciating to Yixing. It grew harder and harder for him to complete his work, as doing so left him feeling exhausted. Suho tried to assist him as best he could, his own determination something sharp and dangerous, like a knife, but there was only so much he could do. It pained him, somehow, strangely, to watch Yixing endure this. He felt almost as if he did not deserve it.

One night, towards the middle of December, Suho brought Yixing a glass of lukewarm water to try to stave off the coughing that had awoken them both. Yixing gulped it down gratefully, then stared at him over the rim of the glass.

“I’m sorry,” Yixing said. Suho felt himself stiffen a little.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” Suho replied, softly. “For I am the one that is sorry.”

“Why?” Yixing asked him, and though it became clear that he wanted to ease back into the pillows, Suho reached for his hand, tugging at it softly.

“Let us take a walk,” he suggested. “I think perhaps the fresh air may help you.”

And so, bundled up in jackets and furs so thick that Yixing’s breath could not escape the fabric, Suho led him out past their small cottage, along the path that would take them into the woods. Tree branches glistened with hard ice, and the ground was dead and still. Animals slept, cozied up in holes and burrows, and yet Suho and his lover, Yixing, continued their trek, winding along a long, curving road that eventually led them towards the base of the nearby mountains. 

Yixing could not believe himself to be staring up at them. They had been walking not long—perhaps ten, fifteen minutes, yet here they were, arrived at a place that he had only looked at longingly from the windows of the hospital. His legs felt stiff and pained, from the walking. Surely they had not come all this way?

“In here,” Suho said, and Yixing was inclined to follow him. For there before the both of them loomed the mouth of a dark cave, a reprieve from the icy chill of the night air and the frequent tickle of winter wind.

The cave, as Yixing began to discover, was deeper than it looked on the outside. Down, further and further, they went, and the more they descended into the darkness, the more that Yixing began to see a light in the distance. No, it was not only one light, he realized, but a great many—a sea of them, twinkling and beckoning him, calling his name in soft whispers. _Zhang Yixing_, they seemed to say to him. _Zhang Yixing, help us._

“What are we doing here?” he managed to gasp out, but Suho had let go of his hand. Yixing came to a stop there, at the bottom of the strange, spiraling path they had walked and stumbled down.

For all around the both of them, filling the cave from the floor to the very top, which Yixing could not even begin to fathom, were candles—they soaked up every inch of space possible, some pressed close together, others further and farther apart. Some were nearly melted down to their wicks, yet others stood tall and proud, towering above the others as though they had no idea that they too would suffer the same fate.

Yixing’s eyes tried to take in every inch of the cave. When he looked in front of him again, Suho was gone.

The soft fur jacket he had worn was gone, and the loose slacks and oversized shirt he had thrown on back at the cottage were gone. The soft, delicate smile of his features, the way his hair always tumbled to one side—everything of it was gone, everything of Suho had vanished. 

Instead, standing before him, was someone who wore the same eyes, yet seemed different in every other aspect of his being.

The man wore only dark colors, blacks and browns that seemed to melt and fade into the darkness of the cave. Even the flickering glow of the candles could not seem to light up any details—he felt like a dark smudge of ink, a blur of pencil lead across a paper. Nothing about him seemed firm. It was though he had some sort of ethereal presence that Yixing could not comprehend.

“You have cheated me, Zhang Yixing,” the man who was Suho said. His hands were clasped in front of him, loose, as though he had done this before, given this speech a hundred, a thousand times.

“What have I done?” Yixing pleaded.

The man approached one of the candles, sitting stubbornly among those already burned out and melted down. His fingers flickered against the flame, making it tremble, and Yixing felt his knees go weak. He was sure he might fall down, tumble and not stand up again.

“You have cheated me out of so many,” the man who was Suho lamented. “You have saved those that should have perished. You have stood in front of me, as I have waited to take their hand and lead them to darkness, and you have stopped me from doing so.”

Yixing’s eyes were suddenly round. He looked like a child again.

“You have cheated Death, too many times.”

Yixing’s breath closed in his throat. He did fall, but the feeling of the hard, ragged stone beneath his knees felt like nothing but coldness, soaking in, climbing up from his toes.

Do you remember, when I said that perhaps this Doctor Zhang was indeed the villain of the story?

Yet there was a certain amount of reluctance in the way that the man curved his fingers around the flame, like a caress. There was a certain amount of longing, when he looked at the candle flame and saw, reflected in it, the look on Yixing’s face. Neither of these things stopped him from hooking his thumb and forefinger together, pressing them over the wick with a soft sizzle.

And Yixing fell again, motionless, to the ground.

Heavy and gilded, the books pages fit together again as though they were the prongs of a lock, lacing into an impossible configuration that no one could possibly seek to dismantle without a key. The boy’s breath had grown quieter and quieter, throughout the length of the story, and now he looked to be sleeping, his body still and supine along the ratted seams of the dirty mattress. Tenderly, the man reached out with a gloved hand, his fingertips falling along the boy’s face, touching at his soft eyelashes and the stricken, hollow curves of his cheeks.

The boy did not stir. Around him, the sounds of moaning and pain-stricken crying had ceased; there was a new calm settled over the room, as though the cool winds from the open window had brought with them a sense of peace, for a time, something that settled over every terminal patient like a warm blanket.

Had this poor child heard the end of the story? Perhaps not, the man reasoned—as his hand stroked down the boy’s neck, over his sunken collarbones and settled, heavy and firm, atop his chest—and it was just as well. The story was not one that he told often, and certainly only one small, tiny blot of ink among the pages of the book in his lap and the stories it contained, and yet—and yet it was the man’s favorite, one that he often relived in his memories, late in the night when he was alone.

The heart, beneath the weight of the man’s palm, was no longer beating.

“Sleep now, child,” Death said, and offered a soft, forlorn sort of smile.

“For there is a kindness in escaping a world that has only this as its true ending.”

_For there is a kindness, in being able to even escape at all._

**Author's Note:**

> this is based loosely upon the brothers grimm story of "godfather death", with my own weird spin on it of course. to the prompter, firstly, thank you so much for prompting this, i really enjoyed exploring it and fitting it into my own ideas. i hope that this is okay!! to the reader, thank you so much for taking the time to read this story. ♥ i had a blast writing it!


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